I think the file is normally called sessionstore.js (although it only contains valid JSON).
If there is data you may want from the file, you should make a copy of the file to preserve it before restarting Firefox. (I'll assume you've called the copy sessionstore.bk.json).
Accessing the data from the terminal.
Note: This section focuses on Unix-like OSes (Linux, Mac, BSD). If you're on Windows, you can either use a Unix style terminal (eg. Git Bash, MSys, etc) or adapt the instructions to a Microsoft terminal. (For all I know, they might even work as is in Powershell; I'm not familar with it.)
You can pretty print the file to make it readable, and search and copy data using either your terminal pager or a tool such as a text editor. A couple of good command line tools:
Python's json module comes with the command line
json.tool. For instance, on a Unix shell, the following command will save the file nicely formatted:cat sessionstore.bk.json | python -m json.tool > sessionstore.pretty.jsonor the following command will let you read it in the terminal pager:
cat sessionstore.bk.json | python -m json.tool | lessNode.js's
underscore-clicommand line tool. If you install NPM, you can then install underscore-cli with the commandnpm install -g underscore-cliThen you can pretty print in colour to the terminal pager with the command:
cat sessionstore.bk.json | underscore print --outfmt pretty | less
Accessing the data with Python.
If you have a basic familiarity with Python, you can import the data into Python as a dict and access it using the standard methods. For example:
import json f = open("sessionstore.bk.json") data=json.load(f) # print a list of top-level JSON entries for key in data: print key Most other languages should have similar libraries available for importing JSON data.
Accessing the data with a dedicated JSON viewer.
You could also use a JSON viewer application. A couple of possibilities:
- The online tool jsonviewer.stack.hu
- The firefox add-on JSONView